VISITORS to Journey Into Space at the Eden Project will have a chance to meet an astronaut and veteran of two space missions this summer.

Pedro Duque was the first Spanish citizen to go into space as a mission specialist aboard the Discovery shuttle on STS-95 which launched from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, in 1998.

He went into orbit again in 2003 as flight engineer aboard the Soyuz TMA vessel during the Cervantes mission on the International Space Station.

Now head of flight operations at the European Space Agency near Munich, Germany, Pedro will visit Eden on August 29 to give two talks about his journeys into space.

The sessions at 12.45pm and 3.15pm in the Mediterranean Biome are part of the Meet the Space Experts programme featuring a range of space enthusiasts including representatives from the National Space Academy, Royal Observatory, Greenwich, European Space Agency and Roseland Observatory.

Pedro’s first space mission was dedicated to research in weightlessness and the study of the sun and he was responsible for the Discovery Shuttle’s computer system.

During his second space flight Pedro ran extensive experiments on earth observation and microgravity.

He is joining other space experts at Eden this summer including Maddie Moate, children’s presenter of Cbeebies’ Do You Know?, who will explain how rockets and robotics work in her session Maddie’s Mission to Mars on September 2 and 3.

Another highlight will be medical doctor Beth Healey who will tell how she spent a year completing research on the European Space Agency’s remote Concordia Station at Antarctica, known as ‘White Mars’, on August 28 and 29.

www.edenproject.com has details.